1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to fraud detection and more particularly to reducing transaction errors.
2. Background Art
Many customers have multiple financial transaction instruments and transaction accounts with a financial institution. These customers often have different billing addresses, mailing addresses, names, telephone numbers, and/or e-mail addresses associated with their different financial transaction instruments and transaction accounts. Thus, when a customer provides a billing address, a mailing address, a name, a telephone number, or an e-mail address to a merchant, the customer may accidentally provide information that is valid, but not identical to that on record for a specific financial transaction instrument or transaction account. When the merchant provides this information to an address verification system, the address verification system responds that the information provided does not match, or only partially matches, that on record. This may result in an incorrect calculation of transaction risk, an incorrectly declined transaction, or an authorization error as well as a reduction in customer satisfaction. This problem has aggravated negative effects because it is likely to occur to devoted customers having multiple transaction accounts and/or financial transaction instruments.
FIG. 1A illustrates an example of the problem where a customer has a first transaction account 102 and a second transaction account 104 with identical names associated with the accounts, but different addresses. Both account records contain information including an account number 106A,B; a name 108A,B; an address 110A,B; and a postal code 112A,B.
The problem arises when a customer presents data 114 to a merchant. In the example of FIG. 1A, presented data 114 includes a financial transaction instrument or an account number 116 similar to that of the first transaction account 102, a presented address 118 similar to that of the second transaction account 104, a presented postal code 120 similar to that of the second transaction account 104, and a presented name 122 similar to that of both transaction accounts 102, 104. The merchant communicates presented data 114 to an address verification system. The address verification system compares presented data 114 to first transaction account 102 based on the similarity between presented account number 116 and first transaction account's account number 106A. The address verification system compares presented address 118 and presented postal code 120 to address 110A and postal code 112A of the first transaction account 102. The address verification system erroneously responds that presented address 118 and presented postal code 120 do not match that of the customer. This error may result in an incorrect calculation of transaction risk, an incorrectly declined transaction, or an authorization error.
FIG. 1B illustrates another example of the problem where a customer has two transaction accounts with identical addresses, a maiden name on a first transaction account 151, and a married name on a second transaction account 152. In this example, both accounts contain information including an account number 156A,B; a name 158A,B; an address 160A,B; and a postal code 162A,B.
The problem arises when a customer presents data 164 to a merchant. In the example of FIG. 1B, presented data 164 includes a financial transaction instrument or an account number 163 similar to that of first transaction account 151, a presented address 166, a presented postal code 168, and a presented name 170 similar to that of the second financial transaction account 152. The merchant communicates the presented data to an address verification system. The address verification system compares presented data 164 to first transaction account 151 based on the similarity of presented account number 163 and the first transaction account's 151 account number 156A. The address verification system compares the presented address 166 to first transaction account's 151 address 160A and responds there is a match. The address verification system also compares presented postal code 168 to first transaction account's 151 postal code 162A and correctly responds that there is a match. However, when the address verification system compares presented name 170 to the first transaction account's 151 name 158A, the address verification system erroneously responds that the name provided does not match that of the customer. Thus, the address verification system erroneously provides a partial match result. This may result in an incorrect calculation of transaction risk, an incorrectly declined transaction, or an authorization error.
Thus, given the foregoing, what is needed is a system, method, and computer program product for customer-level data verification that overcomes the shortcomings listed above.